GivingTuesday: Vienna Nonprofits That Could Use Your Help

VIENNA, VA — If you’re like many Virginians, you’ll spend many of the last few days of November immersed in consumerism, buying this and that for your friends and family, and even indulging yourself. GivingTuesday on Nov. 29 is a chance to turn your attention to local nonprofit groups seeing an alarming decline in small gifts.

Since 2012, nonprofits, community and grassroots groups, and mutual aid networks worldwide have used GivingTuesday to galvanize fundraising, rally volunteers and add momentum to their causes.

Local nonprofits are having a particularly tough time this year. The number of donors shrunk by 7 percent in the first half of 2022, largely due to a “collapse” in the number of small-gift supporters, according to the most recent GivingTuesday quarterly fundraising report.

Donors giving $100 or less were down 17 percent in the first six months of the year, and 8 percent fewer donors made gifts of $101 to $500, according to the report.

GivingTuesday is locally led in more than 240 U.S. communities, networks and coalitions, including Giving Local Together in the DC region. You likely have your own favorite causes among the nonprofits, community and grassroots groups and mutual aid organizations that address local needs here in Vienna.

Some worthy causes to support directly in Vienna include:

• Belong!: An organization providing programs and services to neighbors in need around Vienna and beyond
• Committee for Helping Others: This charity helps people with rent, utility bills and more urgent needs
• Rustic Love Vienna: The nonprofit behind the heart signs seen around town raises funds for organizations to feed food insecure families
• BRAWS: Bringing Resources to Aid Womens Shelters (BRAWS) provides undergarments and menstrual supplies to women and girls in need
• Shepherd's Center of Northern Virginia: A nonprofit providing services to help seniors age in place
• Langley Residential Support Services: A nonprofit providing residential and support services for adults with developmental disabilities
• Vienna Arts Society: This nonprofit supports the arts in Vienna through
• The Women's Center: Provides mental health services and more counseling support to people.
• Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts: This foundation provides performing arts programming at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts as well as education programs
• One Neighborhood Foundation: This nonprofit stems from the Vienna VA Foodies Facebook group and provides Vienna restaurant meals to people in need, first responders, front-line workers and more.

See other nonprofits to support from Great Nonprofits and the Vienna Business Association.

There are some bright spots in the GivingTuesday fundraising report, released by the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, a research effort of the Association of Fundraising Professionals Foundation for Philanthropy and GivingTuesday.

Importantly, although the pool of donors shrunk in the first half of 2022, the dollars contributed increased 6.2 percent as major donors stepped up. At the same time, the increase in large donor contributions was outpaced by second-quarter inflation rate of about 8.5 percent.

“Recaptured donors” — people who at one point had given to an organization, but not in the most recent reporting period — grew by 6.3 percent.

That group likely includes people who supported a charity in a surge of pandemic giving in 2020, as well as those who paused their charitable donations during the first two years of the pandemic and gave again this year, according to Lori Gusdorf, executive vice president of the Association of Fundraising Professionals group, said in a news release.